Insect-inspired Robots

A A tiny insect navigates its way across featureless salt-pans. A cockroach successfully works out how to scramble over an obstacle. The mantis shrimp scans its aquatic world through hyperspectral eyes. Using the most basic of equipment and brains tinier than a pinhead, insects constantly solve complex problems of movement,vision and navigation processing data that would challenge a supercomputer. How they do it is driving one of the most exciting new fields of...